The Great Thaw (Vuelie Reprise)
by thefireplanet
Summary: Stories from the before, the after, and the in-between.
1. how about kai?

**a/n: **hello, all! just posting some of the one-shots i've written from my tumblr. enjoy :)

**prompt**: Anna and Kristoff argue over baby names :)

* * *

"How about Agnetha?"

"Um, how about no. That is, like, the worst name I have ever heard."

"…that was my mother's name."

Anna pauses her perusal of _The Lineage of the Royal Line of Arendelle_."Wait. Really?"

Kristoff rolls his eyes and tosses a pillow at her head. It catches her in the side of her face, and she tips sideways. "No, not really," he says, just as she yells, slightly muffled, "WAR!" and throws the book sitting in her lap in a blind arc. It sails past his head. He blinks at her, deadpans, "You're trying to kill me with your history books, now?"

"Nothing else has worked," Anna sighs dramatically, looking at him from the floor. Nearly every book in the library was spread out around them in various stages of disarray, opened to title pages, middle pages, end pages—history, fantasy, romance, trading records, ships logs. "How about," Anna flips to her stomach, pressing one book closer to the light of the fire and opening it to a random page, "Eugene?"

"Eugene? What kind of name is that?" Kristoff sighs. He's bored, and begins poking her leg with his foot. Anna flips to the cover of the book.

"Trade relations, he is—" she flips back, "—the Prince Consort of Corona, so be nice."

"Nice? I'm always nice."

She shoots him a look.

"I'm sometimes nice. How about Frans?"

"Now, there is a name that starts wars. Hm. Jessica?"

"Leif."

"Klaus!"

"No, not Klaus—Marina."

"We don't live by the ocean. Not the ocean, ocean, anyway—the mini-ocean."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"_Everything_. How about, wait, how about this one—Kai."

"Huh. Kai. I like it."

"Great, come on—" Anna staggers to her feet, dragging him up by the arm. They tumble out of the library, racing by the portraits of past royalty and out into the moonlit hall that housed both her and her sister's bedrooms, and all the while she is hollering, "Elsa! Elsa, we found the perfect name for your baby, Elsa—"

The door to the queen's bedroom opens. Quick as a flash, the floor turns to ice. His legs splay awkwardly, and Anna falls on top of him, and then the bedroom door shuts again. They lie like that, in a tangled heap on the slick floor, for one heartbeat, two.

"Don't say it," Anna warns.

"I told you so."


	2. reindeers are better than people

**a/n: **it's almost toO SWEET TO HANDLE

**prompt: **a Kristoff-Anna proposal

**full title:** _reindeers are better than people, and anna is better than reindeers_

* * *

He's lying in the barn, on a pile of hay, which is slightly ridiculous, considering the fact that the entire palace was open to him. Sven tells him so.

"Yeah, buddy, but I'd rather be with _you_."

Sven rolls his eyes.

"No, I'm serious. I miss you," he plucks a few strings on his lute. "But Kristoff," Sven is saying to him, "you really are just avoiding Anna," and Kristoff shakes his head, "No, I am _not_ avoiding anybody, so give it a rest."

Silence descends across the barn, except for the occasional snort of a horse down the row of stables. He has never liked horses. "How should I do it, then?" he asks Sven. "I mean, if you're mister know-it-all."

"Be romantic about it," Sven says, "get down on one knee, that sort of thing.

"It doesn't seem very…Anna, though, does it?

"Well, then, do something Anna-ish.

"I don't know anything Anna-ish!

"You do realize you're talking to yourself, right?"

Kristoff stops, inhales, shuts his mouth. Sven is chewing cud next to him and looking unamused. He presses his fingers down onto the neck of the lute, runs his right hand across the strings, and begins.

"_Reindeers are better than people—Sven, don't you think that's true?_

_"Yeah, but I met a person who's better than me and also way better than you._

"Oh, really buddy? Well_—does she smell better than reindeers? Can you tell me then, if I'm right?_

_This is quite true, she smells better than you—_but I think you're really just avoiding the question," Kristoff groans, and the lute _twangs_ grossly. "Ugh, Sven. You're no help at all."

Sven looks wounded.

"I mean, you're some help, bud. A little. I just." Kristoff stops, staring straight ahead at the wooden wall in front of him, and begins.

_"So Anna, you're better than reindeers—and even pure cuts of ice—so I hope you'll say: why yes, Kristoff, I'll marry you—in fact, that'd be quite nice. _

_"So don't be the frostbite and bite_."

The door to the barn slams open. "Aargh!" Kristoff shouts, breaking a string, and then something is slamming into him and he's swallowing hay and red hair and his cheeks are on fire and he wants to sink into the ground and _die_, maybe—"How—I mean, were you—the entire—how much of that did you hear?"

"Yes," Anna laughs in response, which isn't really a response at all, and he swallows thickly, trying to rescind, retract, because he wasn't ready, and there was all that—alone time to be had, and—

Sven nips the back of his head, and he's brought back to earth, and Anna is right there. She's saying, "—and I just wanted to say goodnight and I heard that—"

He kisses her.

Sven rolls his eyes—_humans_—and goes back to his hay.


End file.
